It was apparently the last desperate hope of the corps. Our division commander, sitting on his horse and watching us is reported to have said to one of his aides, "If that line breaks, we're gone!"
We lay at full length on the ground, silent save for the exhortation of the officers: "Hold your fire, boys!" "Keep quiet, there!" "Down with that rifle!" For we had reached the point where heed of consequences was gone and a cold recklessness had taken possession of us and it was hard to restrain the men.
On came the Confederates, their "rebel yell" now sounding shrill and clear; and they were firing as they came with so deadly an aim that several of our officers who rose up slightly the better to control their men were hit and fell back dead or wounded.
They crossed the ditch where our regiment had been and we could see each separate star and bar upon their red battle-flags and their slouch hats pulled down to shield their eyes from the setting sun, and then their very faces. I remember how I singled out one after another and admired certain big brown beards as they swarmed up the slope straight toward us.
They were almost on us—some of the men said, not ten feet away, but perhaps imagination shortened the distance—when the Vermont colonel, who, as I remember wore a long, black rubber coat over his uniform and looked like a Methodist parson shouted out the command: "Rise! Fire!"
Like spectres looming from the grave, the line of men stood up, and the Song shrieked out in one awful death-laden volley. The field before us was changed as though by some dire magic. A moment before it had been filled with a yelling, charging host; now it was suddenly cleared. As though an October gust had swept across that May evening, away down to the bottom of the field and beyond the ground was strewn with brown, prostrate forms; but they were not leaves, they were dead and wounded men!
The little Vermont regiment had repulsed and shattered a charging Louisiana brigade. We followed up our volley with a counter-charge, our own regiment meanwhile had rallied and joined us, and when we came to the ditch where we had at first been posted dead men lay across and within it, and from their midst living men who had sought refuge from our fire arose, waving their hands in token of surrender: among these the colonel commanding the Confederate brigade.
As he stood up a big, impetuous Scotch-Irishman confronted him with his bayonet, and the savage exclamation:
"Give me yer soord or I'll r—run ye through!"
The colonel was a stately Southern gentleman whose soldierly spirit was unbroken by misfortune.